Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Hello lovely Lovelies! Looks like Winter made her long awaited debut here at the North Pole! It is cold, but white and beautiful outside. Once again I want to send a HUGE thank you to La Posh Style for their generous giveaway last week and anounce that our winner is a lucky lady by the name of Jenny! If you could drop me an email in the next few days I will put you in touch with La Posh Style to claim your prize.

Besides enjoying the first day of Winter we have been making plans and starting on the stairs. I had a lot of you asking if I was painting both the treads and the risers and while I initially thought that was the route to go until we could dedicate more time and energy to the project, on second thought we decided it was best to just go all in and finish them with hardwood.

But if you are up for a few days of hard work I say go for it (and convince the hubby later LOL)! I would use an oil based primer before slapping the paint on, and while it may be somewhat smelly for an indoor paint job I would also recommend using an oil based, exterior paint for the stairs. A good urethane coating afterwards should protect the final product pretty well to daily wear and tear.

We have somewhat unique stairs, so the next few weeks will be filled with lots of creative thinking and precision cutting. Our stairs are not only freakisly wide, but our treads already over hang, not to mention the fact that our railings are attached directly to the treads and not to a seperate trim. It will make for a beautiful finished product, but lots of work!

I am starting by painting the railings and risers (back of the stair). However, the wood that is currently our risers has been platered with carpet glue and was very knotted so it was not ideal for the clean, finished look we want. So we decided to buy some 1/4 inch birch wood sheets to cute new riser panels.
After being measured and cut to size we primed the panel and then painted it. The nice part about doing it this way is that it is much easier to do the painting since I am not crouched down to reach all the nooks and crannies.

We wanted a very thin piece of wood so that the hang over of the risers would still be dramatic.

We haven't installed them yet, but by using a thin piece we also have the luxury of using a strong adhesive glue and just a few finishing nails in hidden corners instead of having to use nails along the whole panel and then having to fill and paint over them again.
Of course it is a LOOOONG road to even laying the wood but we will get there soon enough!

When my husband and I built our home I decided I did not want to have carpeted stairs. This made things a little difficult because they had already put down the steps, no problem my husband said, put a new tread on top and finish the underneith with some trim and no one will notice. The only difference is that the bottom step and top step are and 1 1/2 different, but after a week you did not notice it any more. Good luck.

i'm am ALWAYS blown away by the projects you (and Sean) tackle with such confidence and how big of projects they are all while other projects are going on. blows my mind. i wish i had half your energy and confidence. you know i can't wait to see how it all looks!!! :)

on another note, Wren's big girl bed/room... is amazing. not that thats any surprise at all but man, it's "wow". what a lucky little girl for so many reasons. :D